Risky Abortions in Uganda by Desperate Women with No Access to Birth Control

No Contraceptives Means More Illegal Abortions in Uganda

Less than one-third of Ugandan women use any form of birth control, according to the country’s 2011 Demographic and Health Survey. Credit: Andrew Green/IPS

Nov 14 2012 (IPS) – Every day at least five women are brought to the gynaecological ward of Uganda’s Mulago National Referral Hospital in Kampala for treatment for complications caused by crude attempts to terminate their pregnancies.

According to Dr. Charles Kiggundu, the head of the hospital’s gynaecological department, some of the women who come here drink gasoline or take untested combinations of herbs and drugs to induce an abortion. Others insert sticks into their vaginas.

The women at the Mulago National Referral Hospital are a small percentage of the estimated 150,000 women who suffer complications from unsafe abortions each year in this landlocked East African nation, where 1,200 women die annually from unsafe abortion attempts, accounting for a quarter of all maternal deaths in the country.

Here a “failure of knowledge about contraceptives” is driving up the rate of unsafe abortions, especially among young women, Kiggundu told IPS.

Less than one-third of Ugandan women use any form of birth control, according to the country’s 2011 Demographic and Health Survey.

A number of the women treated by Kiggundu are unmarried students, many of whom have been abandoned by their partners, he said.

The most recent data found that adolescents and youth account for approximately 40 percent of unsafe abortions worldwide.

“In sub-Saharan Africa, adolescents between the ages of 15 and 19 have, on average, 120 births per 1,000 per year, ranging from a high of 199 per 1,000 girls in Niger to a low of 43 per 1,000 girls in Rwanda. Over half of young women give birth before age 20, and adolescent fertility in most countries in sub-Saharan Africa has shown little decline since 1990,” the report stated.

Moses Mulumba, the executive director of the Centre for Health, Human Rights and Development (CEHURD), said the issue of unsafe abortions was a growing concern among young people in the country.

“The majority of people who are affected are high school and university students,” he told IPS. “There’s no question about it. It’s a problem of the youth.”

But some of the unsafe abortion attempts could have been avoided had women been more aware of efforts to expand legal access to the procedure. There is still a widespread perception that all abortions are illegal in the country, according to Elisa Slattery, director of the Centre for Reproductive Rights’ Africa division.

In 2006 the Ministry of Health legalised abortion in cases of serious risk to the life or mental health of the mother, severe foetal abnormalities, health issues like cervical cancer or HIV/AIDS, or when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.

Greater knowledge about the law’s interpretation could reduce unsafe abortion rates, not just by allowing access to women who legally qualify, but by reducing the stigma around the issue, Slattery told IPS.

Policy guidelines released this year by the government affirmed all women are entitled to post-abortion care – even if the abortion was illegal. But Mulumba said that officials have not done enough to explain to women when they are entitled to a safe abortion.

“Historically people (consider) abortion to be a bad practice,” Mulumba said. “Many people don’t want to talk about it.”

That includes doctors and other health care providers, he said, who could offer the service if they felt morally comfortable doing so.

Kiggundu explained that some health care professionals were reluctant to conduct abortions because of the stigma that surrounds the procedure. Most doctors are either not well informed about the country’s abortion policy or are averse to performing the procedure, and are unlikely to recommend it even in cases where it is necessary, he said.

Author: Leslie Carol Botha

Author, publisher, radio talk show host and internationally recognized expert on women's hormone cycles. Social/political activist on Gardasil the HPV vaccine for adolescent girls. Co-author of "Understanding Your Mood, Mind and Hormone Cycle." Honorary advisory board member for the Foundation for the Study of Cycles and member of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research.